River's Edge
by chromeknickers
Summary: Miranda was only the beginning. The Alliance can never forget what it cannot forgive. Will the crew of Serenity be able to face the onslaught that threatens to divide them? Will they be able to stand? ABANDONED.
1. Crawling

**River's Edge**

**Chapter One: Crawling**

"_You gotta learn to crawl before you can begin to walk"_

"Capt'n!"

Zoe's two syllable shout reverberated throughout the valley, echoing off the tall moss-laden hills that stood juxtaposed against the backdrop of a sky marked with vibrant colours of violet, crimson, and gold.

Dusk had swiftly approached as flocks of birds scattered from unseen perches, the soft flutter of hurried flapping from unladen wings. The air was crisp and dry, filling her nostrils with the acrid taste of dust, sand, and gunpowder. The only sounds in the air were the departing flocks and the silent whiz of bullets that shot past her ears like the sharp intake and hiss of a thousand breaths.

Zoe had her back to the misshapen piece of rock that was momentarily providing her with shelter. She reloaded her shotgun with swift hard motions. Routinised. Mechanised.

She turned sharply to her left and fired three quick rounds into the darkness that threatened to blanket the earth then hastily threw herself back against the safety of the rock. There first two bullets fell short, but the last one hit its target. The mercenary hit the ground with a silent, listless thud – no time for the air in his lungs to escape in the formulation of a grunt.

The man standing to the dead mercenary's right swore in an animalistic furry and quickly jumped to his feet, emptying bullets into the rock that Zoe held her position at. She counted: ten bullets fired, standard for a ten-chamber revolver. He had run out of magazines with his automatic a long time ago. He was spent. It was time to reload.

Zoe spun around, hoisting herself up, finding solid footing. He reloaded his gun in haste only to look up once when he heard her cock her gun. By then it was too late. The last noise he heard was the catch in his breath as he took a bullet square between the eyes and fell hard to the ground.

Zoe squinted her eyes, examining her targets that lay dead a mere five metres from her. She lowered her gun to her side in wariness and looked grimly to her left.

"Sir," she said in a toneless voice, her gun resting against the length of her leg.

A small trickle of blood fell down the side of her temple, disappearing into the hairline. It was a graze from the beginning of the shoot-out, but it didn't concern her. It was time to reform the line, to assess the situation at hand. She looked down at her captain and assessed the situation to be a world of bad.

Malcom Reynolds wiped the dirt and sweat from his brow with his right hand and then painfully placed it on his stomach, applying the needed pressure with a wince. Dark crimson liquid streamed down his taunt fingers, staining his maroon shirt, giving it the look of a shirt that had seen a hard day's work.

This was definitely a hard day.

"How many does that make?" Mal asked, avoiding his first mate's eyes as he painfully rose to his feet, picking up his gun from the bloodstained ground.

He looked to his left, at his count, then to the right in front of Zoe.

"Six dead," she replied tersely. "The other three got away."

She lifted her gun to her chest, snapped it open, and began to reload. She never looked up as she spoke. She just focused on the job at hand.

"They've most likely gone to rustle themselves up a heat-packing posse," she asserted without a moment's pause.

She reached into the belt of her holster for another shell and swiftly loaded it into her Winchester.

"We best not linger."

She snapped her gun back into place and looked back down at the captain, failing to offer a hand to steady him as he miserably tried to find his footing. Somehow, he managed.

"They took off eastward," Mal said, nodding his head with strain in his voice and body. He pointed east with his gun. "We can cut 'em off round that hill o'er there, take the pass down on top of 'em, and choke 'em from the heights as they head down the path."

Mal felt a wave of nausea overtake him, and he fulfilled the urge to cough, spitting a thick wad of blood and phlegm onto the dusty ground. He was momentarily sickened by this but continued on.

"We can bottle neck 'em. Kill the two in front and wound the third."

He pathetically attempted to holster his gun but found the weight of it too immense, causing the holster to come undone and fall to the ground. His gun dangled in his hand, which lay limp at his side.

Zoe looked at him in her normal calculating manner.

"Sir, I don't think that's wise in your condition," she stated as a matter-of-fact. "We need to get you back to the ship and have the doctor fix you up."

She grimaced and leaned down to gather up his gun belt that lay crumpled at his feet. With the leather in hand, she made off towards the Mule.

"Gorram it, Zoe!" Mal swore vehemently, taking a shaky step forward.

His face was bloodied and ghastly, but it was determined. His blue eyes were blazing with fury.

Zoe turned around to regard her captain with mild surprise, or at least, on Zoe's lovely stone face, it registered as a mild look of curiosity.

"That wasn't a suggestion, Zoe. It was an order!" Mal barked.

He looked ready to collapse, but there was heat in his bloodshot eyes and a silent threat in his strained voice.

Zoe turned her back to the captain and walked over to the Mule that sat poorly and partially hidden behind a bush only a few yards away. She threw both hers and the captain's weapons into the back and turned around to walk back towards him.

Mal was clutching his pistol with grim determination in one hand while his other hand was still pressed against his stomach, only seeming to collect the blood that spilled out between his fingertips.

Zoe stopped just feet from her commanding officer. There was no pity in her eyes, but there was concern. Far from garrulous, Zoe was reticent in manner, never speaking unless absolutely necessary. She saw the state that her captain was in, and she felt that now was the time to speak.

She crossed her arms in front of her chest and dug the toe of her boot into the dirt then looked up into the fast approaching twilight sky.

"Capt'n," she breathed in, lowering her head to look directly at him. "You once told me that if you can't stand to fight a battle, you crawl away and come back when you're ready to." She glanced down at her feet and kicked the dirt off of her boots. "No use dying for nothing when you can die for something."

"I ne'er said that!" Mal coughed indignantly, blood dribbling down his lip.

"Yes you did, Sir. The night before they came to pick us up at Serenity," Zoe said with little emotion as Mal's eyes began to focus in sudden realisation. "A lot of us were fixing ourselves to die, to make one last hurrah, one last futile stand..." She paused. "You stopped us that night, stopped us from throwing ourselves willingly into the Alliance's bullets."

"This isn't the same," Mal said unconvincingly, and Zoe knew it.

"Isn't it, Sir?" she asked, her voice less toneless. "That night on Hades, in Serenity Valley, we decided that it was _we_ who were gonna pick our time to die, and we were gonna die for something." She took a step forward, uncrossing her arms. "Today ain't something, Captain, and I'm not about to let you die here for nothing."

Mal's eyes never left Zoe's as he dropped to one knee in futility, in mock submission. She was always the reasonable one, always throwing his own damn speeches back in his face.

He grimaced and spit at the ground again. He glanced up and saw that this time she had her hand held out to him.

He shook his head, a bitter look of despair in his eyes. "I can't leave my men behind in battle, Zoe. You know that," he said, his voice just barely about a hoarse whisper. "I can't leave River and Jayne to die."

He coughed miserably, blood pooling on his bottom lip. His eyes were wide and bloodshot. Zoe nodded in agreement, but her eyes remained fixed like her earlier resolution.

"Dying here won't save 'em, Mal," she stated simply, still holding out her strong and steady outstretched palm.

He stared at her hand for what seemed an eternity. Reality, though, had finally sunk in. Regretfully, yet gratefully, he accepted what she had to offer: a means to stand.

**xXx**

_Seventy-hours earlier …_

"Mal! She's touching Vera!" Jayne half-shouted half-whined in his own particularly petulant manner.

He had been sitting at the mess table polishing his guns when that moon-eyed slip of a girl walked in and laid her dainty little _claws _on his Vera.

"I was just talking to her," River whispered in her usual eerie way.

An amused grin played across her delicate lips as she stroked a slender finger down the nozzle of the automatic rifle. She looked up at Jayne with her big brown eyes, eyes that reflected her playful nature, but eyes without focus, without register.

Jayne looked askance at the girl who was grinning like a loony, stroking his gorram gun. He growled at her and yanked his precious weapon to his chest, guarding it with mixed expressions of anger, anxiety, and weariness conflicting on his face. That girl wasn't all there, and he didn't trust anyone with Vera let alone a crazy pixie like her.

River leaned forward, still grinning with her tongue out, dropping her loose tendrils of hair into the soup bowl in front of her.

"I just wanna smell it. So pretty. Such pretty flowers you have." River sighed and stretched her hand out to touch the gun Jayne had clutched so closely to his chest.

"Mal!" Jayne yelled again, this time desperately, jerking his head in the direction of the helm.

"Don't make me come out there!" Mal barked back from the deck, the tendons standing out on his neck, his nostrils flaring.

Those two had started to get on his last nerve this past week. He thought River had been getting better after Miranda. She had, in a way. She was lucid most of the time, especially when it came to flying; he secretly thanked God for that. She had random outbursts, spouting diatribes or mathematical nonsense. Most of this happened in her sleep or upon waking or when they went on a particular mission, but they were brief and infrequent. She went on the occasional job with them, but only when necessity dictated it. Simon still disapproved but not as vehemently as before. Mal suspected it was because of how River carried herself against the Reavers. She had saved the lot of them then. He never saw her fight, but the pile of dead bodies that surrounded her, and the blood that dripped off the Reavers' own knives that she held in her steady hands was all the proof he needed.

Eight months had passed since then, and she hadn't lifted a hand against a soul. She never carried a gun. Guns were still off limits. However, she seemed to have developed an affinity for Jayne's weapons. Three days last week, she had sneaked into Jayne's bunk to look at them. Well, he hoped she had just looked at them. He had caught her the first time by pure accident. He saw that the mercenary's hatch door was open, and he was about to shout down when he looked directly across to the mess hall and saw Jayne eating at the table. He climbed down and saw River kneeling on Jayne's bed. She had the blanket torn off and was brushing the tips of her fingers along the weapons. He had called her name, and she turned around to look at him with that same look she had given them when the Alliance had busted in and held her at gunpoint. Mal shivered involuntarily just remembering it. Only eighteen years old and those sad brown eyes belied the wisdom and torture of an ancient soul.

He never told Jayne. Luckily, he caught her each time. After the third attempt, he told Jayne to keep his door locked. Jayne had looked at him suspiciously and asked why. He never answered him and walked away, but Jayne did what his captain ordered him to do. However, it didn't stop River from skulking around Jayne, following him like he had candy on him, or rather flowers. It's what she called them, the guns: flowers. No matter what she imagined the weapons to be, this behaviour had to stop. She was driving his mercenary crazy _and _her captain.

"There's a threat for you," Zoe said sarcastically.

Her soft yet deep voice woke him from his reverie. She was bent over at his side, looking down at the schematics of the train job they had taken earlier that afternoon on Persephone. She had turned her head to glance up at Mal, who was standing up, looking out towards the mess hall. He turned his head to stare down at her.

"Yeah? Well ..." Mal paused, furrowing his brow, "_good_!" He emphasized _good _for measure.

He was at his wits end with those two crew mates of his. He had no patience to think up a snappy comeback.

"She's doing it again!" Jayne's petulant whine echoed down the hallway, playing on Mal's last good nerve.

"_Go se!_ Can't they act like adults?" Mal swore and looked down at Zoe, who was still looking up at him. A small almost imperceivable smirk pulled at the corner of her mouth.

"Don't think I didn't notice that!" Mal exclaimed in a mock stern voice, pointing his finger down at Zoe, who turned her attention back to the diagrams.

Mal smiled to himself. That ghost of a smile had been the first one he'd seen on Zoe in eight months. Had it been that long since Miranda, since Book and Wash were taken from them? And for what? The incident at Miranda had revealed a chink in the Alliance's armour, had weakened their position of trust with the people, but they were far from beaten. It didn't remove their authority. Life remained the same on the inner and outer planets.

Life hadn't changed much on Serenity either, except that it was a little more lonelier, a little more sadder. They had to stay ten steps in front of the Alliance. While it seemed as though they were not looking for River any more, suspecting her to be dead, that didn't mean that they were out of the woods yet. It was still unknown whether the Alliance would retaliate against Serenity. Most of the information on the Firefly and its crew had been destroyed by the Assassin, and those who had previously pursued them were dead. It seemed optimistic to think that the Alliance would not want to dig into something that knocked them down off of their pedestal. So they had to keep on the move, on the drift. It was the way he liked it he told himself, but the gnawing feeling at the back of his mind warned him that next time he'd lose something that would make him unable to keep flying.

His shoulders sagged with the unbearable weight of the dead. But he shouldered it like he always did and bent down beside Zoe to look over the schematics one last time.

**xXx**

"Get you're Gorram crazy sister away from me and my guns!" Jayne barked at Simon, who had just entered the mess hall with Kaylee.

The doctor frowned and let go of the mechanic's hand and rushed over to River, taking her outstretched hand into his own, leading her, unwillingly, away from the table, away from Vera.

"But this is how it is done. It is custom," River babbled as Simon took her towards Kaylee.

He scowled at Jayne who still had Vera hugged to his chest.

"Well maybe you shouldn't bring _guns_ to the table!" Simon raised his voice and held River close to him.

She was still mumbling to herself with her face in his chest, struggling to look back around at the gun.

"I show him my hand, show him that I am his friend, then I hold it out to let him sniff at it. He's just skittish." River giggled and looked over at Jayne, who had a confused almost scared look on his face.

Her grin quickly faded, and her eyes locked on Jayne's. Her irises became black pools, cold and calculating. Her keen concentration quickly dissolved into uncertainty as she shook her head as if trying to wake herself from a dream. She cast her eyes downward, bringing her hands to Simon's, pushing herself away from him.

"I-I have to go now," River pleaded, trying to shove past both Simon and Kaylee.

Kaylee rested her hand lightly on River's shoulder. "You okay, Sweetie?" Kaylee asked with concern etched in her pretty green eyes.

"I'm gonna be—" River broke out of Simon's grasp and ran out the doorway.

"River!" Simon called out, chasing after her.

Kaylee grabbed him by the arm. "Just let her be, Simon. Don't baby her."

"But she—" Simon looked down into Kaylee's eyes.

"Wait a bit," Kaylee said, biting her lip.

Simon sighed and lowered his shoulders in defeat. Perhaps he did baby his sister too much.

"Yeah, let her blow chunks on your bed in peace!" Jayne grinned, and Simon turned to look at him in horror.

Eyes wide, Simon ran out of the mess hall towards his room. "River!"

Jayne grinned and chuckled to himself, laying Vera safely down onto the table to continue his cleaning.

Kaylee walked over and swatted him in the arm, which elicited a hurt and confused look from the large mercenary.

"You don't have to be so mean!" Kaylee said, reaching over Vera to grab River's bowl of soup.

"Aww, you know I love to play with the Doc." Jayne snickered, looking over at Kaylee as she took the bowl over to the sink and dumped it in.

"Maybe you shouldn't do that at the table any more," Kaylee said, motioning with her finger at Jayne cleaning his gun.

"Not you too!" he exclaimed with a pout. "This crew is fixing for me to have no fun of my own just because that cracker can't get it in her head that she's not to touch guns!"

"We're not trying to stop you from playing with your gun, Jayne," Kaylee said, and then her eyes grew wide as the large man began to laugh at her in a lewd manner.

"I didn't mean it in that way, you pervert!" Kaylee gasped and threw a hand towel at Jayne, who caught it in mid-air and started polishing Vera off with it. "I'm just saying that we don't care that you clean your _guns_, but you can do that in the privacy of your own room. No need for River to have any encouragement by having guns lying about for her to use."

"Well she should be taught what ownership is," he snarled back at the sweet mechanic. "These guns are mine, not hers. She can't touch 'em unless I says. And I says no!" Jayne stood up and threw the hand towel back at Kaylee, who caught it in surprise.

He picked up Vera and stormed to his bunk in a huff.

Kaylee sighed, bracing herself against the counter top and looked down at the pile of dishes in the sink. "_Go se!_"

**xXx**


	2. Author's Note

**Author's Note:**

I know this just seems like a tease, but I added more to the first chapter so if you've read it already you can go back and read the additional few pages. I do intend to add more to the first chapter as I like most chapters to be at least 15 pages long. I've just been busy with the holidays as everyone else has and haven't been able to get into the story yet.

What I do need, however, is a Beta. I'm too lazy to go over my own work. Also, I was wondering if anyone could supply me with some Mandarin phrases. Oddly enough I only know some Cantonese. Why Mandarin, Joss? WHY?? Geez, I though it was impressive enough that a white girl knows some conversational Cantonese phrases but Mandarin is out of my league. Although I have noticed that some of the swear words are the same, they just sound a bit different. .


End file.
